Talk:Diary of a Madman (Nikolai Gogol)

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Please, contribute! Talk about this story so that those, like myself, who came here seeking reliable research sources can get a better feel for the meanings between the lines of this great work.

Diary of a Madman

Plot Summary Diary of a Madman centers on the life of Arksenty Ivanovich Poprishchin, a low-ranking civil servant (titular counsellor), constantly belittled and criticized for underachieving. He yearns to be noticed by a beautiful woman, Sophie, the daughter of his boss, with whom he has fallen in love. As he said in his first sight of her, just after being a beast of a civil servant himself, “A footman opened the carriage door and out she fluttered, just like a little bird.” Unfortunately, nothing significant comes of this love he feels for her. Sophie is completely unaware of his existence and their relationship is non existent. His diary records his gradual slide into insanity. As his madness deepens, he begins to "understand" the conversations of two dogs and believes he has discovered letters sent between them in his November 13th diary post. The style of the letters, including elements of what Poprishchin deems “dogginess” and “canine nature”. For Poprishchin, these elements are the convincing factor in his belief of the letter’s authenticity. For the reader, these letters are the first sign of Poprishchin losing his sanity. The letters provide Poprishchin with a much more in depth view of Sophie’s life, including the fact that she is engaged to another man. In “The Year 2000, 43rd of April”, it is made most clear that Poprishchin has officially gone mad. This diary entry is the first of many which he has lost the ability to distinguish a true sense of time. In this madness, he begins to believe himself to be the heir to the throne of Spain. He decides to make a Spanish Royal uniform so that the common people will recognize him. Believing to be in Spain, waiting for the Spanish deputies to arrive, he then realizes he is in fact in China. This trip is actually an appearance of his imagination that has been translated from being maltreated in an insane asylum. When he is hauled off and maltreated in the asylum, the madman believes he is taking part in a strange coronation to the Spanish throne. Only in his madness does the lowly anti-hero attain greatness.

Themes

Descent into Madness In the realm of the method of Gogol’s madness, the only possible approach that can direct the reader to contextualize and reflect on such a subject that lies beyond reason is to follow in the path of madness and allow ourselves to be misled. (Kujundzic Dragan) Poprishchin’s descent into madness stems initially from his outlook on society. Poprishchin is unhappy with every aspect of his life and is envious of anyone who he believes has it better than he, which is essentially everyone. His desire to achieve the dignity and authority that he sees around him, but never feels, yields frustration rather than motivation. His lack of motivation causes Poprishchin to fantasize about having dignity and authority, instead of actively trying to work toward this achieving this goal in reality (Gustafson). Poprishchin’s relationship with three specific characters, the Director, the Section Chief and Sofi, contribute significantly to the downfall of his sanity. The Section Chief causes Poprishchin the most direct frustration through constant, yet legitimate criticism. Poprishchin responds to the Section Chief’s behavior with anger and aggression for trying to bring him into reality. The Director takes a much more passive role in affecting Poprishchin. Poprishchin actually idolizes the Director, a large part due to the fact that he remains distant from Poprishchin and never interferes in his personal life with comments or suggestions. Despite this initially peaceful relationship, Poprishchin finds a way to see a menace in the Director, mainly out of envy. Poprishchin notices that the Director has too much ambition, a quality that Poprishchin desires, but knows he cannot achieve in reality, and therefore turns his admiration of the Director into hatred. Sofi is a beautiful woman to whom Poprishchin has a strong sexual attraction. However, Poprishchin painfully discovers that Sofi finds him pathetic and ridiculous, and his inability to cope with this reality drives him further into madness. Interestingly, Poprishchin is enlightened about both the Director’s ambition and Sofi’s view of him from letters written by a dog. It is clear to the reader that the dog and letters are not actually real, but instead are fabricated from Poprishchin’s imagination, and represent the last bit of sanity he has. Expectedly, when Poprishchin is unable to accept what he learns from the letter, he destroys it. By destroying the letters, Poprishchin is detaching himself from the last bit of reality he had, ultimately marking the final step in his descent to full madness (Gustafson). The story satirizes the rampant petty officialdom of the bureaucracy in the 1830s in St Petersburg, and some have interpreted it as going beyond this to become an allegory about the political state of Russia at the time, revealing Gogol's view of the government from the standpoint of a lowly citizen. The story also portrays the average man's quest for individuality in a seemingly indifferent, urban environment.

Alienation One disruptive force contextualized is the relationship between the individual and society. As we allow Poprishchin to mislead us in his madness, we gain insight on the theme of alienation. His struggle allows us to contextualize his alienation from society through a lense set in the time and place of Diary of a Madman, but also to compare and contrast it with a more general sense of any alienation from society. Poprishchin’s alienation from society is strongly rooted to the way he perceives and treats people around him. Poprishchin sees a menace in everyone and always finds a way to blame others for his personal frustrations, and consequently treats them with the aggression he believes they deserve. This behavior fuels a vicious cycle that justifies the negative perception and treatment that the real world exerts toward Poprishchin (Gustafson).

Public and Private Identity The many illusions Poprishchin creates for his false reality are intended to improve either his public identity or his private identity. Power and dignity are the two most significant traits that Poprishchin fantasizes about. We see many attempts by Poprishchin to increase his power in his newspaper world by acquiring political rank, giving himself dominance relative to the general public and ultimately improving his public identity. This side of his fantasy is fueled by his desire of approval from others, a feat he can obviously not achieve in reality. Attempts to improve his private identity are synonymous with gaining dignity and self-respect - Poprishchin’s erotic fantasies are the primary result of this quest. Poprishchin does not feel love, but rather his feelings of humiliation and the need to assert himself serve as the main driver for his erotic fantasies (Gustafson). Numbers There have been many professional analyses on Poprishchin’s unique diary entries attempting to interpret their meaning, with special interest taken to the entry: 43 April 2000. A freudian analysis performed by Professor Ermakov deducted that Poprishchin used this absurd date to avoid May 13, because the word maja suggests majat’sja, which in russian means suffering. Richard Gustafson’s analysis of the entry title is more grounded in the contents of the story. He agrees that Poprishchin is indeed trying to avoid May 13, but his reasoning for such is that the letters from the dogs that exposed the grave reality of Sofi and the Director were presented exactly half a year earlier on November 13 (Gustafson).

Style

Juxtaposition Juxtaposition is Gogol's ultimate method for presenting the distorted world in Diary of a Madman. The story juxtaposes the eccentric with the ordinary, the significant with nonsense, and ultimately reality with madness. Gogol's juxtapositions push the reader to have a complicated response to each of the story’s elements (Erlich).

Double Perspective It is important to note that Poprishchin’s transition from sanity to madness is not instantaneous, but rather can be tracked through a sequence of events. At each point during his descent to madness, the reader can see a fraction of his sanity being replaced with madness, ultimately revealing the double perspective of sanity and madness (Gustafson). Narrative Perspective Poprishchin dominates the narrative like no other Gogolian character. The 1st person perspective complements the themes Gogol is trying to display (Gustafson).

References Erlich, Victor. Gogol. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1969. Kujundzic Dragan. “The method of madness: Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman”. Proquest. Rachel Upthegrove. “On Nikolai Gogol’s Diary of a Madman- reflection.” 2014. The British Journal of Psychiatry, Volume 204, Issue 2. Gustafson, Richard F.. “The Suffering Usurper: Gogol"s Diary of a Madman”. The Slavic and East European Journal 9.3 (1965): 268–280. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tobrien32 (talk • contribs) 02:26, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

NPOV

This seems written from a strictly Communist angle.

I disagree... The story appears to be speaking out against communism.

Funny, I never looked at it from a political standpoint. To me it was always about perception, memory, cognitive psychology... profoundly metaphysical... I better go reread it!

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What is it, a short story or novel? The disambiguation page says novel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_a_Madman

It's a short story (around 10 pages?). The Nikolai Gogol page said novel as well, but I've fixed it. Cssprain 13:58, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

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Regarding the statement in the intro of the article: ""Diary of a Madman" is the only one of Gogol's works written in first person"...Is not Gogol's short story "Nevsky Prospect" also written in the first person?

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The BBC source is an episode on BBC radio that is no longer available on their website.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music source is now just “page not found”.

The quintessence theatre source is still a page, but is not directly correlated with Diary of a Madman. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tobrien32 (talk • contribs) 01:09, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Potential Edits: He seeks to obtain these letters and question the dogs. He examines these letters and convinces himself of their authenticity due to elements and style, which shows that a man didn’t write them. Need way more summary of second half of story. “The Year 2000, 43rd of April” is key to the worsening of his madness.

Juxtapositions (New Section) Juxtaposition is Gogol's ultimate method for presenting the distorted world in Diary of a Madman. The story juxtaposes the eccentric with the ordinary, the significant with the irrelevant, and ultimately reality with madness. Gogol's juxtapositions make the reader have a complicated response to all of its elements. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tobrien32 (talk • contribs) 14:08, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

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Sophie/Sofi

Editors should agree on one spelling of her name in English translation. Biolprof (talk) 22:09, 1 October 2020 (UTC)